[Guide] WiiFlow

Prerequisites

1) The ability to read and comprehend this guide.
2) A Wii that has been softmodded using our Softmod Any Wii guide
3) Original disks to rip or already-made backups of your legally purchased games
3) An SD card to load WiiFlow from
4) A compatible USB hard drive

Important Notice (Read This!)

WiiHacks does not support copyright infringement. Do NOT ask where to download games of any kind (Wii, GameCube, VC, or WW)!

Installing WiiFlow

1) Download the latest WiiFlow version from here. It will be listed as WiiFlow v#.zip (for example, WiiFlow v4.1.zip). Don't worry about anything else on that page, we'll cover it later.
2) Extract the file you just downloaded to your SD card. Overwrite anything if it asks.
3) Put your SD card into your Wii, load the Homebrew Channel, and launch WiiFlow.

Setting Up Your Hard Drive

Setting up your hard drive is pretty simple. All you really need to do is format it to FAT32, for which we just happen to have a great guide for here. It includes instructions for Windows, OS X, and GNU/Linux. After you're done formatting, plug the drive into USB port 0 on the Wii (the port closest to the edge of the casing).

While we generally recommend FAT32, NTFS is also an option. You can check out our guide for that here.

Ripping Your Games

The easiest way to put your games onto you hard drive is to use WiiFlow to rip them for you. When at the main WiiFlow screen, press 1 on your Wii remote and select Install Game. Leave the game partition set to USB1, insert the game you wish to rip, then hit Go. This will handle all the file splitting and naming for you, so don't worry about your games being more than 4 gigabytes.Do this for all the games that you own, and then continue on with the guide.

Note that this works with both Wii games and GameCube games. Wii games install to USB1:/WBFS/ and GC games to USB1:/games/.

If you already have backups of your games stored on your computer, check out Wii Game Manager for transferring them to your HDD.

Downloading Covers

Go back to the main WiiFlow screen and click on the button with gears on it. The first option you will see will be Download covers and titles. Click on the Download button next to that option. Feel free to use the Cover download settings option to choose the region of covers to download, but the default will probably be fine. Choose the big All button to start the download process. Depending on the number of games you have, this will take a few minutes.

After it finishes, you're going to want to download the the GameTDB list. If you don't do this, the names of some games will not show up correctly and it can be quite annoying.

Other WiiFlow Settings

WiiFlow has quite a few settings. A lot of them are self-explanatory (such as the volume options) or aren't important to this guide (Startup Settings, for instance). Here are explanations for a few of them.

Parental control: This allows you to lock certain games and channels with a passcode. Very handy if you have young kids who you don't want playing some of the games that you might own and to keep them from messing with dangerous homebrew.

Adjust Coverflow: This allows you to change around the game coverflow. It has lots of stuff to modify, so mess around with it until you like what you see, then just hit the Save button.

Default video mode: This controls what video mode your games will run in. I usually set it to System, but it probably won't be an issue if you don't have any imported games.

Exit To: This changes where you go when you exit a game (Home button → Wii Menu). You can also set it to return to a specific channel with the Return To Channel option.

Playing GameCube Games With WiiFlow

You have two options for USB loading GC games. DIOS MIOS and Devolution. SNES_Master and cwjakesteel already has great guides for both of them, so there is no point in reinventing the wheel here (DM guide here, Devolution here). Both options have pros and cons, so be sure to do your research.

Forwarder Channel & Autobooting

Forwarder Channel: Grab the latest WiiFlow_Channel_Installer_v#.zip from here and extract it to the your SD card (overwrite anything if asked). Stick the card back in the Wii and launch the Channel Installer app from the HBC. Once it's loaded, simply hit Install Channels.

Autobooting To WiiFlow: Turn your Wii off and turn it back on again while holding the Reset button on the console. This will load Priiloader. Choose the menu option labled Load/Install File and a list of all the homebrew apps on your SD card will pop up. Look through that list, highlight WiiFlow, and press A to install it. Go back to the main Priiloader page and select Settings. Set the Autoboot option to Installed file and the Return to option to Autoboot. Save the settings and you'll be good to go.

NAND Emulation

Extracting your nand

2) Take a copy of your nand.bin and keys.bin files and place them in the same folder.

3) Start the nandExtract.exe

4) Go to file and open nand - then navigate to and select your nand.bin file

5) Right click on the root folder to extract your nand and name the folder nand.

6) Now you should have a folder named nand and the contents should look like this

Nand extraction complete!

Adding your games with ShowMiiWads

1) Grab ShowMiiWads as described above and extract to a folder of your choice.

2) Run ShowMiiWads.exe

3) Go to tools and scroll down to create common key bin

4) Go to options and select change NAND Backup Path and navigate to and select your nand you prepared earlier.

5) Now go to View and select ShowMiiNand

6) Now right click anywhere in ShowMiiWads - select install>File and navigate to the .wad file u wish to install

7) You have now successfully installed your game to the nand.

Plugins

Download the latest plugin pack from here and extract it directly to your SD card. Overwrite if asked.

If you didn't install the forwarder channels, you will need to do so now. Or you can install the WiiFlowLoaderChannel WAD in SD:/wad/ using your preferred WAD manager.

Each plugin will have a special place to put covers and ROMs. These can be viewed and changed in their respective configuration file (plugin name.ini). Just look for the "coverFolder" and "romDir" entries. Be sure that you use forward slashes ("/") instead of back slashes ("\") in all path names when changing them. When naming the covers, be sure the name matches the name of the ROM exactly (including the file extension). I.e. the cover name for "Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.z64" would have to be "Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.z64.png"

Now you can simply launch WiiFlow, go to the Plugins page, launch the emulator you want, and enjoy.

Option Descriptions

[PLUGIN]Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.z64Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.z64magic=46434555//This is the magic number for the plugin. Each plugin has it's own unique 8 digit hexadecimal magic number. Each pair of hex digits are the ASCII value of a character so you end up with a four character ID. You can use this Hex to ASCII converter to see what the magic number really is. Set delimit to nothing.
46 = f, 43 = c, 45 = e, 55=u (46434555 = fceu)

arguments={device}:/{path}|{name}|{loader} //See below for how to use. New feature added as of beta r744.

coverColor=ff0000//This is the cover spine color in hexadecimal of the games that use this plugin. So you can tell the difference between SNES games and SEGA games for example. There are only six choices - ff0000 red, 000000 black, ffffff white, fcff00 yellow, 01a300 green, and 00E360 green 2.

coverFolder=fceugx//This is the folder where your covers will be kept. This folder should be in root:/wiiflow/boxcovers/ or root:/wiiflow/covers/. So in this example your NES full covers will go in root:/wiiflow/boxcovers/fceugx/ and flat covers in root:/wiiflow/covers/fceugx/. Boxcovers is for your full covers (back,spine,front) and covers is for 2d flat covers (just the front no spine). If you edit your wiiflow.ini file and change dir_box_covers and/or dir_flat_covers be sure to use those paths instead.

fileTypes=.nes|.fds|.nsf|.unf|.nez|.unif|.zip|.7z//This is a list of file extensions associated with this plugin dol. You can add or delete extensions if you want. Seperate multiple extensions with a |.

romDir=fceugx/roms //This is the folder where your roms or movies will be kept. In this example NES roms should be in root:/fceugx/roms/. If you have it in a different partition or device (SD, USB) than WiiFlow you will have to go to emu mode>config and change the partition. Note - this will affect all plugins.

dolFile=fceugx-mod9.dol //This is the name of the dol app associated with this plugin.

bannerSound=nes.ogg//This is the sound played whenever you select a game associated with this plugin.

displayname=FCEUltraGX//This is name that WiiFlow will display on screen when using the plugin select menu.

consoleCoverID=nintendo //That's for cover downloading, currently it is not used, but it will be used for gametdb, we already decided to use "nintendo" and "sega" as separate categories, nothing really done in that direction yet. (Thanks Fix for the info)

Update - as of beta r744 ReturnLoader option is no longer needed and a new 'arguments=' line has been added. It works like this:
Just copy and paste the following arguments line based on what plugin it is.

Ocarina

WiiFlow allows for easy use of Ocarina codes. Check out the WiiFlow section of our Ocarina guide here.

Troubleshooting

If you've followed the guide completely and are still having issues, here are a few things to try.
1) Search for your problem! Chances are REALLY good somebody's dealt with it before.
2) Make sure that your hard drive is on the compatibility list.
3) Post a sysCheck (guide here) on this thread. Somebody will take a look at it and tell you if your softmod was done correctly.
4) Re-rip your games.
5) If the issue is GC related, please post your questions in the guide you used for that. You'll get help faster/better help there.
6) If your game is a troublesome one, follow the specific instructions for that game.
7) If you get an error code, you'll find some info about it in our error index.

2 Users Say Thank You to Pob3008 For This Useful Post

Hi,
Great guide, I have been a usbloader gx fan for ever but seeing that wiiflow can access all emulators with covers I thought it would be be real cool to try this out. I've managed to get wiiflow playing my wii games and my snes roms. The wii covers show up fine however i'm having trouble getting the rom covers to load, I have them in the following sd/wiiflow/boxcovers/snes9xgx and I've changed the box name to match the rom file and added ".png" to the end of the cover file but it's not showing up!! I've searched and searched but with no real joy, I did find another guide on another forum giving there version of a wii hack, it's different to your guide the main being d2x is version10 beta. I'm not so keen on following that, as I know from you guys that v8 is the most stable d2x. I love, and trust this site and all the guides on here, I along with many others always receive good feedback on any problems another reason for not doing it.
FYI I'm on system menu 4.1e and I updated my softmod last week using your "any wii guide" and I have the most up to date version of wiiflow inc plugins pack. I'm desperate to get all these covers for my roms if anyone can help I would greatly appreciate it.

Awesome guide thanks..
Only thing I can suggest, make sure to highlight which port to plug the USB in I had games showing, but going to black then system menu as I was in wrong port. Took me 2 hours to work that out

How do i load wiiflow from usb instead of my sd card? It says " No available usb partitions for data and no sd card inserted when i pull the sd card. I installed the same files on my usb as i did the sd card. When i put the card in it works fine. Thank you!

1 User Says Thank You llaffer For This Useful Post

I changed the wiiflow.ini file as you stated and now i get a stack dump. w:/apps/wiiflow/wiiflow.ini is the one i changed. Any other suggestions. I would like a channel to work instead of having to go to homebrew. I tried installing channels and the same thing happens. I get a stack dump. And my HD is fat32.
Thanks!

I have just re-softmoded my wii again with the latest guide, taking my wiiflow to 4.1 (I think), all working fine, but would really like to keep wiiflow updated to the latest version (4.21 I think), but cant seem to get the updater to work within wiiflow. Any suggestions please?

Also when putting new games on my USB drive (using wii game manager), then pluggin my HD back into the wii, wiiflow doesn't always see the new games straight away. Whats the correct procedure for getting wiiflow to see new games on the USB hard drive please?

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I have a link to the download page of WiiFlow in my signature. You can download the latest file (if .zip, unzip it to reveal the .dol file). Then replace the sd:/apps/wiiflow/boot.dol file that you have with the new one (same name, same directory -- overwrite the existing file), and then you will have 4.2.1.